I’m planning a trip to the Shanghai Power Station of Art, and I couldn’t help but notice (and appreciate the cover design for a book called Reactivation. Can you read what it says on the cover?
(You’ll need at least an Intermediate level of Chinese to know the words, but even a high elementary-level student should have learned most of the characters, in theory.)
OK, to prevent anyone from getting too frustrated, here’s the Chinese:
重新发电
I’m looking …
I’m pretty into geeky tech stuff, so I’m excited about Google Glass. On the new promo site, though, I noticed this strange photo:
My first thought was, “where can you buy vegetables in Chinese by the pound?” Must be in Chinatown in the U.S.
I showed this to my wife, and her immediate reaction was, “they wrote the 苗 in 豆苗 wrong.”
If you’re using Google Glass to buy vegetables in Chinese in Chinatown in the U.S., I’d imagine …
Since our baby was born in 2011, I’ve resisted the urge to flood my blog with baby topics. But as our little one learns to talk and begins to explore the world around her, I can’t help but delve into issues of first language acquisition, bilingualism, and culture. These are all topics I’ve thought about before, but never have I had such powerful motivation to really dig into them.
Photo by Maristela.O on Flickr
I recently read this in an …
Wow, this year December has turned out to be very low on posts. I’ve been trying to update twice a week, but I didn’t pull it off this month. I was in Florida visiting family for more than half the month, and blogging just didn’t happen.
While not blogging, I’ve been thinking a bit about how this 2012 went. I came up with two main conclusions.
Again, I have to thank the …
The U.S. Consulate in Shanghai is helping U.S. citizens mail their ballots back to meet the state deadlines:
Returning your ballot by mail. Place your voted ballot in a U.S. postage-paid envelope containing the address of your local election officials. Drop it off at the Consulate and we’ll send it back home for you without the need to pay international postage. If you can’t visit the Consulate in person, ask a friend or colleague drop it off for you. If
…
As Mid-Autumn Moon Festival (中秋节) approaches (this year it’s September 30th), there is a lot of mooncake buying going on in Shanghai. It’s still a tradition to buy mooncakes (月饼), and although some people like them, a lot of the mooncake purchases are for clients, employees, etc. But exactly what the mooncakes are is changing quite a bit, and some of the new forms (like Haagen Dazs’s) have a bit more hope of appealing to younger …
Every now and then I see something around Shanghai that feels like it were almost designed for Chinese learners, to put on a flashcard or something. Here’s the latest one (photographed near the Xintiandi Metro station):
The character is 宠 (CHONG), and it means “to spoil” or “to pamper.” You know, that’s the whole reason people get pets (宠物): they’re animals (动物) that they can totally love, dote on, and spoil (宠).
Obviously, this …
We were at the office today during Typhoon Day (hey, the last one was a total false alarm!), and one of my employees was late because the subway was running extra slow during the typhoon. She handed me this 致歉信 (letter of apology):
This was interesting to me, because I’d never seen something like this before. It’s pretty standard at many Chinese companies to require an official doctor’s note if you ever call in sick. But I wasn’t aware that …
A friend of a friend recently opened a restaurant in Shanghai called 斗味.
That’s 斗 as in 斗争 (struggle) or 决斗 (duel), and 味 as in 味道 (scent, taste) or 口味 (flavor).
After dinner the other night, a friend was jokingly telling me that the name could be read 二十味 or 二十口未(口味). Ah, characterplay is always welcome… This particular example reminded me of Lin Danda (a timeless classic in character ambiguity).
斗味 is pretty good, and …
Vancl (凡客) is a popular Chinese clothing brand that hires the likes of celebrity author/race car driver Han Han (韩寒) for its ads.
This ad featuring Li Yuchun (李宇春) is all over Shanghai right now:
On first glance, the Chinese in this ad is pretty simple, but doesn’t seem to make sense. 我爱你 means “I love you,” and 无所谓 means “don’t care.” Huh?
But look closer… It’s not 无所谓 in the ad, but 无所畏…
John has lived in China for
12.7
years. He is a linguist focused on SLA and tech.
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